GTA San Andreas gets RTX Remix makeover & it looks absolutely unrecognizable

GTA San Andreas might be two decades old, but that has not stopped modders from going in and modernizing the title using RTX Remix, and the results are stunning.

GTA San Andreas is a legendary game, allowing you to take to the streets as CJ in one of the most iconic open-world titles of the 00s. The game also received a PC port, where you’re able to play the game on modern systems.

But, there’s just one problem, going back in time two decades, and pumping the game up to modern resolutions will reveal the game’s age. Modern rendering and lighting techniques aren’t present, and some of the texture work also looks fairly dated. Luckily, with Nvidia RTX Remix currently in open beta, one user has taken it upon themselves to give the game a path-traced remaster, with fresh textures, and more realistic lighting.

YouTuber MxBenchmarkPC has tested the mod by Hemry81 themselves, using a modern PC rig, which includes the powerful RTX 4080. Loading the mod onto your game requires you to jump through some hoops, but the results speak for themselves.

An unrecognizable Los Santos

RTX Remix allows you to replace the game’s original in-engine lighting with realistic path tracing like we previously saw in Portal RTX and Cyberpunk 2077’s Overdrive mode. This can lead to some unnatural-looking environments, or less moody lighting than the developers intended, however. But, you can also assign materials to objects, which changes the properties of how light bounces off of them.

This gives GTA San Andreas an entirely new look and feel, despite its age. As more developers get their hands on RTX Remix, we can’t wait to see exactly what kinds of magic people can pull off by giving retro titles a new lease of life, and a new lick of paint.